Illustration: Emanuel Josef Margold. Embroidery design, 1907.
The Austrian designer Emanuel Josef Margold produced decorative work over a fairly wide spectrum, from ceramics, through interior design to graphics. He was a member of the Wiener Werkstatte through his association firstly as a student of Josef Hoffmann at the Arts and Crafts School in Vienna, and then as an assistant at the Werkstatte. Margold was also involved and was indeed a member of both the German and Austrian Werkbund.
Like many artists, designers and decorators who were part of the Wiener Werkstatte, Margold was also involved at least partially, with textiles. The illustrations shown here were produced by him in 1907, for embroidery. These extraordinary designs and pattern work, although in some respects typical of the style of the Werkstatte, still appear as a stark departure for the norms expected for embroidery work, even in the early twentieth century which had already seen a number of innovations and style advances within the pattern side of the craft.
Illustration: Emanuel Josef Margold. Embroidery design, 1907.
Margold not only let his creative imagination run with these particular designs, he also consciously made a break with many of the conventions and accepted traditions of embroidery design in Central Europe. There is very little in the pattern work that is conventionally floral or connected with the customs and styles of Austria. Even the standards and norms of the Art Nouveau movement which had become an accepted style across Europe, seem to be missing. However, it should be remembered that these pieces were designed in 1907 and by that date much of the initial enthusiasm for the New Art had faded in Europe. Many were now preparing or were prepared to take the next step towards Modernism. This was particularly so in Germany where the idea of the rational was quickly replacing the affected in many avenues of design and indeed decoration and pattern work. The position in Austria and Vienna in particular was more complicated.
Whatever can be said about the decorative work of the Wiener Werkstatte and its Modernist approach, much of the resulting work was still very much pattern led. Decoration, whether exterior, interior or applied tended to use fairly extensive, as well as intensive all over pattern, or at least the use of panels which were often inset, but still intensively constructed. Although this cannot be said for every designer at the Wiener Werkstatte and indeed every piece of work produced by them, there was still a general style and theme towards decoration and pattern that ran through much of the Werkstatte.
Illustration: Emanuel Josef Margold. Embroidery design, 1907.
In this respect, Margold's embroidery work can be seen as being very much part of the Werkstatte theme, more so than perhaps necessarily that of the developing rationality of German contemporary work. Modernism and decorative pattern have always struggled with each other, neither wanting to give ground and both trying in some respects to limit the influence of the other on that of any form of contemporary art, architecture or design. That the two still struggle to come to terms with each other shows that intransigence and an unwillingness to compromise is still active on both sides. In Vienna the experiment and resulting achievements produced by the Werkstatte seemed to be a much more successful compromise, one that tried to harmonise the machine-like rationality of design with the natural human preponderance for decoration and pattern
It is unknown whether these embroidery designs were ever produced as decorative pieces or whether there were any ideas towards colour. They may well have been intended to retain their stark black thread work on a white background. Ultimately, it was not really important whether they were produced as practical textile craft, what was more important was that Margold, along with others intended that the traditional skill of embroidery should be used to both produce contemporary pattern work that would lock it into the modern world of decoration and pattern that the Wiener Werkstatte was attempting to achieve within the decorative arts, but also and perhaps more importantly still, to extend and develop the creative parameters of both the craft itself and the makers.
Illustration: Emanuel Josef Margold. Embroidery design, 1907.
Emanuel Josef Margold. Wiener Moderne - Kýnstlerkolonie Darmstadt - Corporate Design fýr Bahlsen - Neues Bauen in Berlin (German Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: 1903-1932 (Special Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932
Textiles of the Wiener Werkstatte: 1910-1932
Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstatte
Design der Wiener Werkstätte
Wiener Werkstatte: Avantgarde, Art Deco, Industrial Design (German Edition)
